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Creme Eggs get twisted sister

Cadbury is breaking with almost 90 years of tradition by launching a chocolate bar spin-off of the Creme Egg, backed by a TV ad campaign portraying it as the "evil" offspring of the much-loved Easter treat.

The confectionery company, which first started producing a version of the Creme Egg in the 1920s, is launching a £2m TV campaign to introduce Creme Egg Twisted.

Two TV commercials borrow from movies including Godzilla and Terminator.

Cadbury's TV campaign opens with a Creme Egg being splattered into goo by a whisk. The goo then reforms - echoing Robert Patrick's liquid cyborg from Terminator 2 - into an animated caterpillar-like chocolate bar. The Twisted bar then comes to life and starts firing off chunks of goo.

Cadbury, which is launching the first TV ad during the Champions League final on ITV1 on Wednesday, will make the bar available throughout the year while Creme Eggs will still be available in the key Easter period.

"This campaign is about the dark side of Creme Egg," said Neil Simpson, the chief executive of Cadbury's ad agency, Publicis, which has produced the ad.

"We wanted to build on the success of the theme of the Creme Egg campaign and introduce a twisted sibling. The campaign has a more contemporary feel to it, compared to traditional advertising campaigns for the brand, inspired by the way the Creme Egg is made."

In January, Publicis developed a series of 20 short TV ads that featured Creme Eggs being split open in ever more elaborate ways with objects including a hammer, a picture and a ghetto blaster.

About this article

Cadbury launches Creme Egg spin-off campaign

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 09.35 EDT on Tuesday 20 May 2008.
It was last modified at 09.35 EDT on Wednesday 21 May 2008.
It was first published at 01.52 EDT on Tuesday 20 May 2008.